


We Were The Victims Of Ourselves

by waltzmatildah



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-12
Updated: 2011-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-17 23:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/182605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Love. Tequila. Comfort. Envy.</p><p>Post season six finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Were The Victims Of Ourselves

_We were the kings and queens of promise,  
we were the victims of ourselves.  
Maybe the children of a lesser god,  
between heaven and hell._

He pauses in his doorway, the fingers from one hand clenched around the frame, the others paused mid-scratch on his bare stomach. He feels his forehead crease into a frown, thoughts tumbling in some kind of tortuous slow motion that is making it all kinds of impossible to figure out exactly which episode of the twilight zone he's just walked in on.

He manages a somewhat startled _huh?_ that he could have sworn was mostly inside his own head. But it's loud enough to get their attention and two heads, eight, shit, no, what? _four_ eyes turn to face him, seemingly unperturbed by his quicksand like confusion.

Though, to be fair, he spends most of his days in a drug addled haze of confused vague-ness at the moment, that they seem unsurprised by it now is probably more the result of habituation than anything else.

He's greeted with one smile and one smirk and he responds in the only way he knows how.

"Duuuude..."

He notes with some disappointment that his fingers are still wrapped tightly around the wooden frame of his door. He's beginning to think he'll never again stand upright without the aid of a solid structure to hold him there and honestly, he's more than just a little sick and tired of how pathetic that feels.

"Are you okay?"

Meredith is looking at him with her usual level of cautious concern. It's been her permanent mask for more weeks than he can count now and he's starting to find remembering how she _used_ to look infinitely more difficult than it should be.

He nods automatically. She's not the only one with a default these days.

"Seriously?" Cristina appears to have opted for a more antagonistic approach. _Just for something different._ "Because I'm kinda disappointed by your lack of reaction. You can't tell me that having two hot women in your bed at once is a regular occurence..."

"Hot women? Where? I don't see any..." He gives the room an exaggerated once over, but his rebuttal is lacking. In bite and strength and volume and a whole host of other fighting words that he's half convinced leaked out of him alongside the vast majority of his total blood volume.

Maybe he'll find them all back there, soaked into the carpet.

"What are you doing here?" The clouds are beginning to part somewhat at the seams and while the appearing sky is far from blue he's definitely starting to see the brighter side of this rare occasion.

"Well, I was waiting for you-"

"And I wanted to talk to Mere-"

"And I decided to wait in here-"

"And when I got to her room there was just McDreamy in all his far from McDreamy 'don't you know I was shot in the chest' glory-"

"And then she walked past your door-"

"And Mere called out to me-"

"And now here we both are... waiting for you-"

"I'm not waiting for him, I'm talking to you... It just so happens that I'm doing it here-"

"Oh, right. I'm waiting for you. She's talking to me."

As if it's the most normal thing in the world.

"And you're both in my bed." A statement, not a question. He's learned never to question that. "Sweet."

He releases his hold on the door frame. Tries to fake a degree of confidence that he absolutely does not feel as he begins the journey from the hallway to his bed. A little more awake now and a lot more self conscious. The jarring damage is still mostly covered in thick gauze but the adjacent bruising is pretty spectacular, a technicolour reminder of his near miss that he could definitely do without.

Cristina eyes him cautiously. Ever the surgeon. The silent scrutiny tumbles around in his gut. Fights for prime position amid all the insecurity and self loathing that have taken up a tentative place there.

But his best defence has always been attack.

"Coming through..."

His path to the middle of the bed is un-athletic to say the least. With one arm wrapped around his ribs and the other shaky at best, it's slow going and frequently punctuated with pained grunts that he can't quite manage to morph into coughs or lewd suggestions.

Try as he might.

He still doesn't really get how he got to here but he's never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

And this gift horse has come baring hot chicks and booze.

"Tequila?" It's taken him 'til now to spot it. A sure sign of his complete incapacitation. "What are we celebrating?"

In the acid rain fallout of the shooting there's been dead babies to contend with and absent girlfriends to get over and post surgical complications to beat into submission. There is no celebrating any of that and all three of them know it.

Know it with a heavy-weight certainty that would eat them alive. If they let it. If they hadn't all been there before.

In one way or another.

"Cristina broke up with Owen." And you can always rely on Meredith to be matter of fact and a little less than sensitive.

"Again?"

"Yes again. And you do not get to judge me, mister 'my girlfriend dumped me for the man who saved my life'... and we are not celebrating..." Alex watches a look pass between the two girls. He can't quite decipher it beyond the surface level annoyance but he guesses there's more to this story than he's ever likely to have explained to him.

Thank god.

He pulls the bottle from Cristina's lap. Twirls the cool glass around in his fingertips.

"Why'd you waste your money on the classy stuff?" he comments, reading the label with raised eyebrows. "You know we're not even gonna taste it after the first shot anyway..."

"Hey!" And the bottle is wrenched from his grasp. "We nothing, mister," Meredith counters. "No tequila for you. I did not read anywhere on your pain meds 'best taken with half a bottle of tequila' and I'm not in the mood to clean up your vomit. So, no tequila for you."

Cristina reaches a hand across him and wraps it around the bottle. Tugs it back from where Meredith has confiscated it and twists the screw top open.

"Nope, no tequila for the drugged up dude with the hole in his chest. Which just means more for me and my sad, sad life..."

She punctuates her proclamation with a noisy swig. Uses the back of her hand to wipe the excess off her lips before wiping _that_ off onto his sheets.

"Hey! Bitch."

And not even he is sure whether he's talking more about the drinking in front of him or the wiping her saliva onto where he has to sleep.

“Oh, shut up. In half an hour you won't even remember this happened at all...”

And he knows from experience that she's probably right.

The aforementioned pain meds are actually overdue and Meredith is looking at him like she knows this despite the fact that she can't possibly. He wonders if he's getting less convincing at hiding it as the hours and days pass by and his resolve slips somewhere down around his ankles.

The girls pass the bottle back and forth between them several more times, getting louder and more inappropriate as the minutes tick off. It's actually quite comforting pressed between the two of them. Their rare blend of dysfunctional surprisingly grounding and real amid weeks of barely contained chaos and panic.

“Alex?”

“Hey, evilspawn. Rise and shine-”

“Cristina.” The admonishment is slurred slightly, testament to their liquor consumption.

He opens eyes he hadn't even realised were closed and blinks to bring the images into focus.

“Hey, you need to take these before you go to sleep...”

He tries to murmur his disagreement, too relaxed to shift enough to get the medication down.

And more than a little afraid that the movement will only serve to release the fragile hold he's managed to maintain on the pain so far.

But Meredith is nothing if not persistent. And he knows from experience that she won't let him sleep without taking the damn pills first and he's already concluded that all his fight is still a stain on the conference room carpet back at Seattle Grace.

Along with most of his dignity and a fair chunk of his self respect.

He takes the proffered pills diligently, bounces them in his palm several times in an effort to wrest back some semblance of control before accepting the water bottle that has appeared from no where, lid already removed.

“You'd have made a good mom, you know?”

“Take the pills and go to sleep, Alex...”

“Yeah, evilspawn. Take the pills and go to sleep. We have half a bottle left to finish and no offense but... you take up way too much space in this bed.”

“I am so having dreams where you two are naked in my bed tonight. You should know that. That you'll be naked in my dreams. I'll see... stuff...” He's drifting again. And it's getting harder to remember how to move his tongue to enunciate sounds and he's not even really sure what it is he wants to say anymore...

“Good night, Alex.” The parroted sound is oddly comforting and he can't help the ghosted smirk his lips curve into as he finally gives up his half hearted fight to stay awake.

The End


End file.
